Gitmo saga: 'The US is about freedom, not about holding people without charge'

We might have many transfers from Gitmo in 2014 - every day that a man sits without charge in Guantanamo is another black stain on US history, Carlos Warner, Federal Public Defender, told RT.

RT:Today marks five years since President
Obama signed an order to close Guantanamo. Why is it still
open?

Carlos Warner: Well, it’s time for the president
to act. When we talked earlier the president claimed he had no
power to transfer people. Now it’s without question that he has
full authority and power to transfer people. Now it’s time for
him to actually do it. We’ve seen a trickle of transfers but I
agree that people should be going out by the dozens at this
point.

RT:From a legal point of view, what do you
make of holding people without charge and indefinitely?

CW: Hopefully, these numbers are going to
dwindle, but the Administration still wants to hold some people
indefinitely. And what we do in the United States is that we
charge people or we release them. We do not hold people
indefinitely. It’s completely against our laws, to hold people
indefinitely, it’s certainly against international law as well.
But let’s hope that the Administration means what it says, that
they are putting everyone through this periodic review process
and let’s hope that they are going to be transferred.

RT:Some of these prisoners could well be
terrorists, so is it responsible to simply let them go?

CW: That's been debunked so many times over the
year. Obviously, we know that people being held in Guantanamo are
not the worse of the worst. They have mostly political problems.
Many of them are from Yemen. The situation is still unstable in
Yemen, but certainly the idea that these are hard terrorists,
that’s not the case. In fact, Colin Powell and his staff said
many years ago that they knew that the majority of the men being
brought to Guantanamo were innocent. In fact, it’s not hard to
believe that people that are there now are innocent.

RT:Isn’t the world a safer place with
detention camps like Guantanamo?

CW: It’s funny because I was watching a lot of
World War II history and that was exactly the same argument that
was made there: that we are safer by putting innocent people
behind bars. That’s just not how our country functions. Our
country is about freedom, not about holding people without charge
for something that some people, maybe the majority of the US
citizens, will be up to no good one day. That’s not what we do.
We hold people who have committed crimes, not innocent people.

RT:Given the criticism over the billions
spent on Guantanamo, the human rights scandals, the hunger
strikers and their force feeding - nothing is going to close the
facility?

CW: In this profession you have to be an
optimist sometimes. And we have seen the Administration transfer
over the past few months about 11 individuals who were at
Guantanamo, certainly since the hunger strikes began. They were
the easy solutions, now they are getting down to more difficult
ones. Again, guilty or innocent – it’s not an issue, it’s about
where these individuals are going to go. Will they go to Saudi
Arabia? Will they go to Kuwait? Will they go to Qatar? Will they
go back to Yemen? We don’t know those questions, but they need to
be answered, because every day that a man sits without charge in
Guantanamo is another black stain on our country’s history.

RT:Do you personally see any light at the
end of the tunnel - what are the chances we will soon see
Guantanamo closed and the detainees released?

CW: I can’t predict the future, but if I was a
betting man, l'd say that we will have many transfers in 2014,
but we will still have a core of 30 to 40 men at the end of the
day that our country will have to decide what we are going to do
with: are we going to charge them or are we going to release
them. But I think that we could see in 2014, and I’m being very
optimistic, maybe up to 100-120 transfers. And that’s the people
who have been cleared time and time again by not only Obama
Administration, but also the Bush Administration. And President
Obama's own periodic review said they’ve recently cleared the
individuals that before they said they would never release. So my
optimism tells me that we will have large-scale transfers this
year. But I hope it’s not at the end of the year, these men
should be released immediately.

The spirits of many men were lifted by these transfers we have
seen, and certainly we have others who believe that this is just
the same story over and over again. I think each of them is
entitled to that opinion because we don’t really know what’s
going to happen this year, but I’m trying to assure them that we
are doing everything we can to work with the Administration to
have them transferred. And I hope that when we talk in 6 months,
I’ll tell you that 6 out of my 12 clients, or 8 out of my 12
clients have been transferred from Guantanamo. I think it’s a
real possibility but it’s going to take the president to continue
[putting] pressure, it has to continue to be a priority for the
Administration.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.